Mexico: Drug Cartels Are Fifth Largest Employer
A study by Science analyzes the infiltration of drug cartels in Mexico: to compensate for the killings and arrests, they have to recruit an average of 350 people every day.
The prevalence of drug cartels in Mexican society is such that they represent the fifth largest employer in the country. This is explained by an article in Science, according to which in 2022 they will include from 160 to 185 thousand active participants.
The system suffers great losses caused by arrests and war between various cartels. It needs between 350 and 370 new recruits per week to stay afloat. The cartel with the most members is the New Generation of Jalisco (17.9%), which is also the most bloody one, followed by the Sinaloa Cartel (8.9%) and the New Family of Michoacán (6.2%).
“Mexican cartels lose many members as a result of conflict with other cartels and incarcerations. Yet, despite their losses, cartels manage to increase violence for years. We address this puzzle by leveraging data on homicides, missing persons, and incarcerations in Mexico for the past decade along with information on cartel interactions,” says the abstract of the article, signed by Rafael Prieto-Curiel, Gian Maria Campedelli, and Alejandro Hope.
The fight against drug trafficking, as it has been waged in recent years by Mexico and the USA, has not led to any particular results and, indeed, there has been an escalation of violence. There were 34,000 victims of intentional homicide in Mexico in 2021 (nearly 27 victims per 100,000 inhabitants), and from 2007 to 2021, the country’s homicide rate increased by 300%. From 2006 to 2018, between 125,000 and 150,000 murders were linked to organized crime, according to institutional sources cited by Science. At the same time, the cartels are one of the most important employers in Mexico, so they always manage to find new personnel.
The researchers explain that to reduce violence in Mexico, it would be much more effective to act at the recruitment stage. This would have a triple effect: “First, it will lower the number of cartel members, reducing the violence that it can create by having fewer killers. Second, it will lower the number of targets, so fewer people are vulnerable to suffering more violence. And third, it will reduce the cartel’s capacity for future recruitment.”